This invention relates to rotary machines for reducing wood into wood flakes or strands suitable for the production of pressed wood particle board, headboard, or other kindred composite wood products. The rotary machines in question reduce logs directly into wood flakes or strands with the logs being previously debarked and cut to suitable lengths.
The present invention is more especially directed to a horizontal disk type flaker, which has an increased flake production capacity.
There are many flakers of various designs currently available, such as a drum-type flaker as described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,969,095, and a vertical disk-type flaker as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,346,744.
In a vertical disk arrangement, the input feed for supplying logs to the disk cutting face has to be on the downturning side of the disk. Because of this, only a single feed can be associated with a given disk. Also, vertical disk flakers invariably employ a belt drive to connect the disk to the associated drive motor. Belt drives can accommodate only a limited amount of load. If a dual feed were installed on a vertical disk machine, the power requirements would become too large for the belt drive to handle.
A horizontal disk wood flaker of the type now employed has a vertical chute or hopper for feeding logs, that have been debarked and cut into suitable lengths, into contact with an upper cutting face of the horizontal rotary disk. Typically there is a vertical feed box on one side of the axis and a motor and drive transmission for the disk on the other side of the axis but also disposed above the disk. An area is left available for changing out knife blades on the cutting disk. These machines have a continuous conveyor system in which a horizontal conveyor brings the cut-to-length logs into the top of the vertical feed box where the logs form a stack that proceeds downwards into contact with the cutting face of the disk.
Although there is no "upturning" or "downturning" side of the horizontal disk, no one has previously considered adding a second feed box; this is partly because of the positioning of the motor drive on the top of the disk, and also partly because of the requirement to leave room for access the replacement of cutting blades. However, simply increasing the size of the vertical feed box to accommodate a greater capacity places a great, unbalanced radial load on the shaft of the disk and can cause wear on the bearings for the machine.